La banlieue l'emporte à Toronto

Toronto Coun. Rob Ford has widened his lead in the mayoral race, according to a new public opion poll. Toronto Coun. Rob Ford has widened his lead in the mayoral race, according to a new public opion poll. (CBC)

A new public opinion poll suggests that maverick councillor Rob Ford's campaign for mayor of Toronto has struck a deep chord with voters.

Among decided voters Ford's lead in the race is widening, according to the results of a survey done by Pollstra Research of Hamilton, Ont.

The city councillor's message in the campaign has been one of fiscal restraint — saying if he is elected he will cut the wasteful spending at city hall.

"Toronto has a spending problem, not a revenue problem," he says on his website.

The poll results released Wednesday show nearly 38 per cent of those who have made up their minds say they will vote for Ford on Oct. 25.

George Smitherman — Ford's nearest rival — has the overall support of about 29 per cent.

For Ford it means a jump of more than seven per cent in voter support since June, while support for Smitherman, Coun. Joe Pantalone and Sarah Thomson has remained flat.

"I find the results are a little surprising," said Josh Justice, president of the polling company, in a telephone interview with CBC News. "There has been a noticeable shift in momentum."

The poll shows the lion's share of Ford's support comes from the outside the old City of Toronto , with his strongest showing in the former municipalities of York, Scarborough, North York and especially on his home turf of Etobicoke.

Smitherman leads the polls in the City of Toronto and East York.

The Pollstra poll also asked the 432 respondents for their voting preference in federal politics —

and the results show Ford's appeal stretches across party lines.

Not surprisingly Ford has an enormous lead among Conservative supporters, with 65.7 per cent of those voters saying they intend to vote for him. The next closest candidate is Sarah Thomson with 11.6 per cent.

Surprisingly Ford also leads with Liberal supporters, although the margin of error puts him in a virtual tie with Smitherman, the former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister.

Among Liberals, 36.8 per cent of those surveyed say they would vote for Ford. Smitherman has the backing of 34.2 per cent.

When it comes to NDP supporters, deputy mayor Pantalone comes out on top with 36 per cent and Smitherman places second with 32 per cent. But 20 per cent of NDP supporters say they will vote for Ford.

The undecided vote also appears to be shrinking. While still at 32 per cent, Justice says it is not unusual to have that percentage at this stage in the election.

"It's kind of where we would put it," he said, pointing out that the number of undecided has dropped since June.

"Two-thirds have decided who they will support," Justice said.

The polling firm said the survey was commissioned by a non-partisan research group and carried out between July 30 and Aug. 5. The margin of error is 3.8 per cent 19 times out of 20.

I just watched that youtube video you posted. Very gutsy for a councilman to go after his own perks like that. It shows he's not afraid to do the right thing.

I hope he does well!

(Although his figure of 20-30 million dollars seems exaggerated... 45 councilors, so that's an average of 500,000$ of perks on councilors. I don't think a zoo pass (100$?), a metro pass (100$?), golf passes (100$?) add up to 500,000$ each. I think the figure is closer to 100,000$ than 30$million. Still, it's 100,000$ too much, and i applaud this guy for fighting it!)

Well the last horse has finally crossed the finish line: the Rob Ford campaign has put out a transit policy, allowing us to compare it to the plans of his rivals for the mayor’s chair. The Ford campaign released a PDF of the plan and a YouTube video that could charitably be called “low budget.” It actually makes us yearn for the cinematography of the Stephane Dion Liberals. The highlights of the plan, after the jump.

* Extending the Sheppard and Danforth subway lines out to the Scarborough Town Centre
* 100 kilometres of off-road bike paths based in ravines and along rail lines and hydro corridors
* Removing streetcars from downtown “arterial roads,” like Queen and King streets, presumably

Streetcars suffer some heavy abuse in the Ford plan, which calls them slow and congestion-causing. Instead, Ford proposes replacing streetcars with buses, which are apparently nimble and svelte (never mind that buses might actually be slower [PDF]). The motivating philosophy behind the plan is pretty clear when you read it: words like “congestion” and “gridlock” make a heavy appearance, while “sustainable” is nowhere to be found. If a reader thought the Ford campaign’s idea of transit policy was “get everything out of the way of cars,” well done.

The other campaigns have reacted swiftly. Sarah Thomson, who regrettably started the cheerleading for new subways in this city, calls Ford on his Robbie-come-lately-ism, saying, “I have been saying since March that Toronto needs to build subways, not streetcars…but his subway plan is not well thought out. Toronto cannot expand the Sheppard line without first building a Downtown Relief Line.” Rocco Rossi is quoted by the National Post as saying, “It’s clearly a guy whose heart isn’t in it. The single biggest amount of money extracted from development [fees] doesn’t even go to public transit; it goes to roads.”

George Smitherman goes to town on what is unquestionably the biggest hole in Ford’s plan: the projection that the city can simply reallocate billions in provincial money from Transit City to subway expansion. Of course, it’s not like arguments between the mayor and Queen’s Park over transit spending could go wrong in any way, right?

Across Toronto this morning bleary-eyed residents grabbed their two-wheelers and cycled to Starbucks, ordered up a stiff frappuccino — what the hell, make it 2% milk, I’ll need it — and surveyed the damage.

It couldn’t be true. Rob Ford, Mr. Double-Double, a guy who never met a cruller he didn’t like, had pulled it off. The man got himself elected mayor. All those angry suburbanites, the ones who were supposed to complain a lot but skip the actual process of voting, had turned up en masse and put the guy in office.

For Toronto’s urban sophisticates, it was a wipe-out. Total repudiation. Worse than the time they ran out of well-oaked chardonnay at Vintages. What are they supposed to do now, move to Calgary? Buy a leaf blower, for Chrissake? Any day now they’ll be erecting barriers at Pusateri’s, checking IDs. No one gets in without a credit card from Home Depot.

Wearily they munched their almond biscottis and totted up the devastation. Someone would have to contact the holistic, non-profit communal bike-sharing project and warn them the grand opening, scheduled for January, would be delayed.

Expansion of the rooftop lawn at City Hall would have to be put on ice, construction of the solar-powered arboretum delayed, shipments of biodegradable, non-toxic, soy-based weed control returned to the dealer. Oh, just keep the bloody deposit. Might as well just buy some mums at Costco and stick them in the lobby, like they do in Mississauga where that … woman… was re-elected once again. How old is she now, 300? She’ll be more insufferable than ever, demanding we show up at some shopping mall and help co-ordinate bus routes. Hazel dear, we don’t want your buses co-ordinating with ours, we want your people to stay home on weekends.
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All across the city the scene at Starbucks was being repeated. The man in charge of closing the main access highways every weekend for kite-flying festivals and g0-cart races was checking the want ads for job openings. Classes were cancelled at the new Streetcar Drivers’ Training Centre, where they’d been practising how to arrive at stops in bunches of three or four at a time, twenty minutes behind schedule, without bumping into one another. There were nothing but sad faces at the Toronto Works yard, where they’d been busy digging up roads for seven years — the same ones, over and over — and now face the prospect of putting them all back together so people can actually drive on them.

David Miller’s SUV driver, who knew to keep the motor running while the mayor made his annual Earth Day speech, was devastated. So were the taxi drivers outside TTC headquarters, who stand to lose all that business from commissioners taking cabs across town to discuss improving the transit system. Up in the planning department, where they’d been figuring out when to break the news of yet another fare hike so they could build themselves a new headquarters, gloom was everywhere. What’s the point of working for the public transit system if you can’t borrow money to build yourself a new office, conveniently near the highway and with plenty of free parking?

Speaking of devastation, what about plans for the new four-story hockey rink down near the waterfront, the one the old council wanted to build even though it would cost $88 million and they only had $34 million to pay for it? Don’t even ask. You think Rob Ford’s going to agree to borrow an extra $54 million for a rink where the Zambonis have to travel by elevator, just because it would be prettier than the alternative? Give up sweetheart. You ever see Rob Ford? You think he plays hockey?

Nope, it was just an ugly day all-round in poor old Toronto. The wailing was so loud it woke the ticket-takers on the Bloor subway line. Food inspectors, accustomed to easy overtime from weekends spent harrassing hot dog vendors, contemplated the loss of income. Things were so bad at Queers Against Israeli Apartheid they couldn’t even summon the courage to blame the Jews.

Oh, and that reminds me … You know that application form for next year’s grant money? Might as well recycle it now dear, while they’re still collecting the blue boxes.

That is funny. Because wasn't it a bunch of leftists who prevented Ann Coulter from speaking at the University of Ottawa? Or Benjamin Netanyahu in Montreal? Or tried awful hard to prevent George W. Bush from speaking at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel? Rob Ford (nor most right-wingers) are not angry about people thinking differently. We just won't stand for a bunch of hooligans trashing our city.

That is a cheap shot, and you know it. Not everyone is naturally built like a runner. Rob Ford's sport has always been football. A sport where it is of greater advantage to be large than to be small. Here is his opinion on bike lanes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF_NgbtUR6E

A lot of people say bizarre things. Richard Bergeron has said a lot worse than Rob Ford ever said. (He thinks 9/11 is a conspiracy of the Bush administration, his quote about wanting to murder a motorist, he doesn't think man walked on the moon, etc. Some of his (many) quotes here: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/a.../06/c4507.html

I don't think he is favouring the "periphery" as you call it, I think he is actually acknowledging it exists, and that it is just as much a part of Toronto as Yorkville, Rosedale and Cabbagetown. Here is the Rob Ford transportation plan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xfsIj6gYAw I think it makes a certain amount of sense. The suburbs should be linked up to the subway, and we can't deny that a lot of people need cars (why should we make life more difficult for them??)